Library Limelights 295

 

Nathan Dylan Goodwin. The Sawtooth Slayer. Self-published, 2022. Available at the author's website, nathandylangoodwin.com and Amazon.com.

This is the second in Goodwin's Venator series, following The Chester Creek Murders (LL244). I'd recommend reading the first one beforehand since there is some overlap. Maddie is the owner of Venator, an investigative genetic genealogy company. It has been assisting police with cold cases where some genetic material of the perpetrator is available. From that DNA they are able to find "matches" in some (not all*) genealogical databases, working back in time to locate a common ancestor for both match and criminal. Then they must work forward through all descendants, what they call reverse-genealogy, to identify a potential candidate as the perpetrator. Although research has its dramatic points, non-genealogists might feel a bit dizzy from the process, but the personal lives of the Venator five are equally, if not more, compelling. The main setting is Salt Lake City under lockdown restrictions of pandemic year 2020.

Maddie's employees are Hudson, their IT expert who is entangled in a private case against company policy; Kenyatta, dealing with child custody anguish after her divorce; Becky, daughter of the man who employed Maddie's husband Michael when he disappeared five years ago; and Ross, roommate of Becky, who coordinates the case file. Maddie herself is still grieving the strange disappearance of Michael five years ago. Only one fingerprint was found on his abandoned truck, that of a stranger to her—but new information about him is coming. Becky, too, is trying to find inside information in her estranged father's company, to help Maddie. Hudson struggles, conflicted about adopting a child with an increasingly waspish wife.

Now, for the first time, Venator's expertise is required on a very urgent live case: Twin Falls, Idaho, police are desperate to find a serial killer of young women before he strikes again. Detective Maria Gonzalez and her team are at an impasse. Each Venator researcher is under the same time-sensitive pressure; soon they are building speculative "trees," handling stressful personal issues as best they can. Goodwin uses the device of inserting the predator's thoughts and movements; clearly the man is a crazed incel.**

As I followed Venator's backtracking methods (never exactly the same for each ancestor), I marvelled at their procedural skills, whether in domestic (US-based) or foreign sources. Yet I found the serial predator somehow too familiar, too stereotyped, perhaps because I've read enough novels featuring a similar character by masters of the genre. In addition, I'd question how much reliance Venator places on "geo-ancestry," also known as "ethnicity." But one can only admire the huge amount of research that Goodwin undertook, to construct numerous fictional but credible pedigrees. The author goes from strength to strength in his plots and character development. Goodwin is also clever at marketing, building a well-deserved fan base. Be sure to check out his website where Goodwin, Venator, and Morton Farrier ‒ forensic genealogist – hang out.

* Not all large genealogical database companies have agreed to cooperate with police investigations; some provide an opt-in or opt-out feature for clients to make the decision personally.

** Involuntary celibates who take misogynism to extremes: another newly popular subject in crime novels.

Business

▪ Maddie replied, "Now you need to tell us as much about the case as you can: victims, locations, autopsy reports and anything at all that you have on the killer himself." (23)

▪ The DNA coding pointed to a man with very pale skin, brown hair and blue eyes. (34)

▪ "It's just a stupid myth that gets perpetuated that immigrants were forced to change their names when they arrived here," Kenyatta explained. "But it's nonsense." (104)

▪ "Twelve of the killer's great-great-great-grandparents," Maddie continued, "and we're about to start the reverse-genealogy phase of linking these twelve families together, kind of like a reverse pyramid. Hopefully at the bottom of that pyramid is one man's name." (264)

▪ She had to remind herself that investigative genetic genealogy was simply another tool for law enforcement who were themselves running their own parallel investigations as they usually would. (267)

▪ "Zoom meeting in five minutes. We've got something." (293)

Domestic

▪ "My wife doesn't want your understanding. She wants the answers that she paid you to get," he said icily. (131)

▪ Becky picked up the yellow legal pad upon which she had written all the details of the two men who'd been working on the Haiti-based project with Michael Barnhart. (135)

▪ Whatever Maddie was currently going through, the last thing that she needed to hear right now was that two of Michael's close colleagues had wound up dead around the same time that he disappeared. (139)

▪ She glanced up and said, "You can be the one to tell the adoption agency that you've changed your mind. I'm not doing it." (148)

▪ Maddie was shaking as she confessed, "I never told him I was pregnant." (159)

▪ And then she saw Emmanuel Gribbon for the first time. The man whose fingerprint was the only one found after a CSI sweep of Michael's truck. In all likelihood, the man she was now looking at was the last person to have seen Michael alive. (164)

▪ She was planning to go out to dinner with a cop who was helping her to find her absent husband. Too weird. (224)

Maddie chastises

"Okay, Hudson, let me tell you where I'm at on this. I appreciate that you're not in an easy position. But...I just can't have a member of the Venator staff taking on private jobs where the DNA has come to you illegally. This is exactly why so many people have issues with investigative genetic genealogy. They say it's like the Wild West and that we're a law unto ourselves: as long as we find the killer, or rapist, or identify the human remains, it doesn't matter how we get there. But it does matter, Hudson. It matters to me and my company. And, most of all, it matters to the very survival of this industry. We're pioneers in this field, marching ahead of official regulation and legislation, but it will catch up with us soon and we need to be showing exemplary practice when it does." (30)

Sarah Vaughan. Reputation. NYC: Emily Bestler Books/Atria, 2022.

It's hard to imagine all the trouble Emma Webster unwittingly creates for herself. Trouble? More like a tsunami of unwelcome, harassing attention. As a new MP, Emma's main focus is women's issues and she successfully campaigned to amend a bill protecting identity of victims. The top political journalist for a tabloid, Mike Stokes, is a contact who helped her with favourable newspaper articles. This novel is about family effects too: Emma's passion for, and time spent, on the job caused her husband David to drift away into the arms of her best friend Caroline. Her teenage daughter Flora is proud of her mother as a rising star in parliament, but is unable to confide in her about the relentless bullying she receives at school. Emma is the prime narrator, with Flora and others taking a turn.

The irony is that the more public Emma becomes, the more she is harassed, threatened, and even stalked. This is not just casual misogyny on social media; her fear and anxiety are climbing from insidious texts, phone calls, mail, a threat of an acid attack. She has one evening of comfort in a boozy dinner with Mike to celebrate her victory in the House, when she finds him pleasant and empathetic, so much so that they sleep together that night. Then Flora's bomb drops. In an opportune moment of anger, Flora took a video of her chief tormentor, Leah, who was taunting her in the nude in the school changing room. And Flora sent it to a male classmate. Emma will do anything to protect her daughter, avoid publicity, keep this "revenge porn" incident out of the news. But Mike finds out.

Conflicting forces that follow twist Emma's life into a scandal vortex. Every action she takes is seen as hypocritical or self-serving. Her reputation is in shreds. Someone breaks into the house she shares with other female MPs with tragic results. At that point we enter the fascinating courtroom section of the book and I'm avoiding spoilers. The author uses her sympathetic characters to explore every aspect of ethics and morality in dramatic fashion. It's a compelling rendition of women in politics and as online victims, with some stunning final revelations. Powerful!

One-liners

▪ My key twisted in the bike lock, and then I was running up the five steps to the front door, horribly exposed as I fumbled with my keys. (42)

▪ With print journalism dying, every hack—even one with the experience and acumen of a political editor―was only as good as his last story. (54)

▪ "I just fret that there's something preoccupying her that she can't tell me about, and that bothers me ..." (68)

▪ "This is a mistake which you'll learn from and then we'll move on," I continued as I held her tight, because neither of us could guess the ramifications of her behavior. (83)

▪ And she had clearly tiptoed around her stepdaughter too much: being too hands-off, failing to appreciate that what she'd thought was a usual case of teenage girls falling out could escalate to such a toxic situation. (111)

▪ The different Mikes I've known coalesce: collaborator, colleague, friend, lover, stalker, threat. (134)

▪ I have spent my life trying to be honest—and now that I haven't been, it's backfired badly. (160)

▪ I am broken by the narrative that's been spun about me. (239)

Multi-liners

▪ "I'll be watching how you spend your time, though," he spat at me. "I'll be watching you." (17)

▪ "The absolute bastard. He ruined her life. He took her life and he's not even going to prison." (52)

▪ Mike was easy to talk to. Inevitable for a journalist, I suppose. ... We were no longer toasting our professional success but sharing our parental failings. (68)

▪ Because, much as she knows the Other Woman tag is ludicrous, it has stuck to her like Velcro, and she doesn't like it. She, as much as Emma, is preoccupied with her good name. (184)

Outrage

"So, you'll cooperate. Tell us your side of the story?"

I looked at him, appalled. He really didn't get it. "Absolutely no fucking way."

"Oh, Emma." His tone was one of marked disappointment.

"No bloody way. I am not discussing it. And there is absolutely no way you could print anything about her. She's a child. Under eighteen. You'd be breaking the law if you touched this story. Besides—would the Chronicle really do this to a kid?"

He gave an unapologetic shrug. Clearly breaking the law, not to mention industry guidelines, was a risk his rag was willing to take. (93-4)

Caroline

"She's put herself in the public eye, she has to cope with the repercussions. The payback. But I'm asking you to think about what you're doing to a young girl."

"Is that what you came all the way up here to ask me?" He shook his head slowly, and at that moment she felt a surge of rage at him daring to be sardonic. "Your stepdaughter's hardly some blameless innocent. She sent revenge porn. A moving image of a fourteen-year-old girl. Exactly the thing her mother's been campaigning against. I suggested to Emma we do this in a sensitive way. Start a public conversation about the pressures our teenagers are under. Discuss online bullying and the impact on teenagers' mental health. Show the full picture. But if she won't cooperate, it's in the public interest to expose hypocrisy of all sorts." (113)

Columnist Marcus

Yet all I can see is the curl of his sensuous top lip. His very palpable sneer.

And his scorn drips from his pen: perfectly calibrated to wound while stopping just short of being legally prejudicial. It's a scorn I know, that I remember all too well. Once it was so effective, I'd physically recoil, or jump to do his bidding. Even now it kindles shame, apprehension, and deep unease. (195)